Humanity

My skin is forever forgetful
And while its a virtuous cycle,
 The scrubbing and choking on 
        Soot and Sinew
My tender epidermis rapidly decaying to regenerate
For the cells to then wither once more.
 I drag my nails along the residue
The experience flaking away en masse
All evidence fades as I shed and
          shed again.

Eventide

On a bare pathway
The sun is dipping and energy is dissipating
Nearly ceasing to exist.
Innocence remains in play, the silence holding it sacred. 
Kinetics and potentiality
creates//enables
false actions and indifference.
Soon we were
Blanketed beneath the lustrous night
pins passing by our unprotected cheeks.
Then came this cretinous ambition
To undo all of it,
To make things as if they never happened in the first place.
To abandon the discrepancy between 
Today and Tomorrow 
To disregard the innumerable consequences of disappearing.
To destroy the realization
that inadvertent moment
Is not nearly enough 
To reclaim revirescence.

untitled

Weighty stones set on sore hips
Compaction -- Inevitability
Sat directly on the core
Pushing spirits from hollow mouths.
The gaping ‘O’ flatlines while
Fist over teeth attempt to pulverize 
The unforeseen phantom atop her.
Gaunt limbs attached to flat feet
Sink into decimated leaves and
Beneath the soles give way to passive waters. 
The current crawls
Kissing well admired dirty toes
Begging for an apology.
If only the ripples roared. 
The horizon was flat, current all inviting
Strategically patient
For only one detail could derail the steadfast future. 
Willows dipped down crowning her head
And all was ephemeral. 
Leaves attached to green strings 
Transformed into a thorn ridden garland. 
Thrust by the scalp
She claimed the forceful suggestion for submission. 
So Step
       After
            Step
                She Sank.

AM I BEING HUNTED BY THE DIVINE

i’ve been feeding swine and swans spoils from my flesh alike
this body akin to fermented dough
folded in on itself over an alter
if not me, then Jesus Christ 
or Sylvia Plath
squatting on a slab of stone in a city center
as the chorus pleads “please pray” 
before swiftly announcing 
“this soul is not for sale” 
messiah or mozart
genius or generally idolized 
i am food for the famished and the full and the otherwise too fucked to feel spiritual contentment

Baptism in the Mountains

     
                       My severed head,
       Processing all that is a delicate touch from changing,
 Strung out lightning bugs pinging on the bleached walls of my bare              skull.

      slick droplets slather my skin
Violent in their reproach
                          but still, my body dances.
Betrothed to me by me,
A lover once belted a lowly tune 
Carrying notes of uncertainty.

Bloated and bathing in blue light
Showering in hollow rays
  Mist in my eyes
        A hand over my mouth
Forced to drop my husk and surrender.

Stained Petals/Dear Darling


I.

To be seven years old and unafraid
   I was crying to stop it all.

  The sensation
     The falling
        The cold, round, blue-black space 
           And the turning world.
 
           I was born to eat flowers.

         I said to myself,
                          Some flowers bloom and die in your mouth.

  I did not like it.
 I don't want to talk.
 To become a bad thing,
  A paroxysm of rage.

Murder wet against my bosom
                            Coming, Coming, Coming.

II.

You were too young when they put dirt in your virgin body and unfortunately no one ever told you to stop eating worms.

GODS COUNTY

Is it God in these one-off exchanges? Did I catch a glimmer in an elder's smile, or in the shadow of a poor panhandler? I watch kids kick over needles and laugh, continuing to run along. The hollowed plastic hitting pavement echoes in my ears, louder than their giggles. They know what that is and how to identify who uses them. It's too soon for them to understand we were all born innocent. When their awareness sets in and the streets no longer feel safe after dark but they must be outside, they’ll learn to cope. The line between the children and the chronically underserved adults will blur. Generation after generation, it always comes to a head. A happy child is no match for poverty. All they ask for is a chance to not be kept impoverished. An escape, an escape from these conditions. I do not want to trade off tragedies for triumph when I have been so close to either side. From the top to the bottom, I see you. The escape isn’t always in the form of education, or talent, or even pure luck. Sometimes the means are more sinister. Sometimes, it is at the cost of community. When reality fades away, tell me, do you speak to God? They say the dope is a lot stronger than it used to be. Users don’t want to hide in abandoned houses anymore out of fear. Who will find them if something goes wrong? I carry Narcan and a knife. You never know which side of disaster you’ll find yourself on. Once a little child, so many have been let down. I understand anger in the face of privilege. There are reasons to dismiss change when it’s never been of benefit to you. The city gives free needles and not much else. Doctors give out pharmaceutical prescriptions to kick off addictions. We were always playing a rigged game. Jesus has always held the hand of those who are suffering. In averted gazes, do you feel martyrdom? Life expectancy is at least 80 when you're born in Manhattan or Queens. In the Bronx though, 80 is the best you’re looking at boroughwide. We are victims to circumstances engineered to oppress us. Still, we navigate. We gather what little expendable income, time, and energy we have and put it into protecting our communities from malevolent external forces. Don’t let these faux leaders convince you it’s about suffering alone. They aim to keep individualistic attitudes on top. The media will tell you, you are special, but they aren’t. A rhetoric passed down from class to class, from caste to caste. They will try to convince you the Bronx is home to the undesirables, until developers decide it's not. It's for everyone (if there's a profit to be made)! Between police and policymakers I often wonder, do they fear God? And I worry, because God knows every heart. I don’t worry for my neighbors, for drug addicts or for children. Lord knows they’re trying their best with the hand they’ve been dealt, that there are simply too many factors larger than us at play. Behind ‘black on black crime’ are proxy wars for entities most of its victims will never know. Our blood stains hands far outside of our city, even outside of our country. But the Bronx, like so many other underserved counties across America, can be rehabilitated. However, it cannot be done from the outside. No one has the compassion for and understanding of our struggles more than we do. And it starts with protecting the children. With the exposure and acknowledgment of our circumstances. With creating paths for success within our own communities. So many organizations have popped up to facilitate Bronx natives growth. More are on the way. We are the last ones on the totem pole to fight for our city. So naturally, fight, we must. With God on our side, we will prevail.

Mary

The space between her toes bothered her. She could not make them even. Even in the stretching and strain they could only go so far. You could train your other muscles to stretch further and further until you could bend like taffy. Yet toes capabilities were finite.

She dipped her feet into the creek and kept the gaps between her wee sausages closed, then released. As the cool water touched her, she closed her eyes. She focused on the pressure, the flow sending all kinds of microscopic life forms between her toes. As she clenched them again she thought, “I have the power to kill many". No one liked to imagine themselves as a killer unless they were sick. What kind of individual purposely maims others? But when it came down to Lynn, to her power, she sure liked to imagine herself capable. The whole walk home she imagined when the situation would arise when she'd have to kill. Cornered in a bar or on a walk like this one, she’d grab the nearest object and go right for the temple. The soft part of the skull, she learned. Again and again she’d strike until there were bones in her hands and blood on her face. Maybe she’d go for the eyes instead, where he least expects it, take two fingers and gouge them out. Blindness in an instant.

She only imagined herself killing men. The only people she felt held a lick of power over her, and any amount of superiority. She felt men were sour and sick, a disease trickled down from human conception itself: Men. When they spit or picked their noses it drove her wild. How, how can they be so entitled? So free to shove it in women's faces as if no one is watching them. If a woman is present, who cares of her revolt if not trying to court her? What is she beyond her sexual functions and maternal uses?

This thought loop made her seethe. Not a man in sight and still unrest bubbled over. She let out a frustrated yelp, then a tired sigh. Though it could’ve been louder, with no one around to hear her scream, but then again maybe she would attract someone who would. She lived in fear of the next man and felt it would never change. Letting her feet get rough on the dirt road was her protest, her armpits unshaven and her hair unkempt. Who would desire her? Yet she knew just by her pulse that she was prey. At times she liked it, the attention, the eyes and practical drool falling from men's mouths. For moments she’d mistaken it for power. But it was her they were hunting. They wanted to bite her breast and abuse her body so they could feel big, no-- larger than life. The more attractive the girl, the bigger the boast. As she washed up for dinner that night, she’d stare in the mirror and ogle her body trying to see it from the others perspective. There were few guys who’d seen her post-pubescent body even in a bikini and even less in pubescence. Only one. Her hand halfheartedly traveled down, down her body until she felt the now long healed scar tissue that adorned her thigh, spreading her entire hands width.

Wincing in remembrance, she thought about her sister Mary instead, how easily she subscribed to it all. Mary wanted to get married in an orchard to a man of her race, raise two kids and never have to work a day after 40. It was only a matter of time before she’d marry her high school sweetheart Job. She promised herself she wouldn’t be the bride fighting with a baby bump for the spotlight on the aisle. Rest assured though, a child would be conceived on the night of the wedding. Hopefully he’d let the husband's stitch heal before he started pushing to try again.

“Do you really think you’ll marry him?”, She asked as they stood in the kitchen after another dinner their mother had worked through.

“Won’t you get tired of being miserable Lynn?”, Mary shot back over her shoulder, tired of her sister's attempts to change her life plan, the same one every girl in their town wanted to follow. She stood over the sink cleaning dishes, a shining star of domesticity meant to guide her sister— not instill doubt.

Mary's retort gave her a lot to think of. Sure she was the only one out of her university friends who hadn’t had any romantic prospects, but was her freedom worth sacrificing in exchange for a lover? Surely not. She’d rather stroll alone than have a man trailing behind her asking all sorts of sorry questions like ‘what are you thinking about’. She would tell the truth, she wanted to kill him. Then and there she’d drive a wedge between them, she’d expose a world of thought he had no idea how to enter. And from that moment he would fear her and her unpredictability. She was a neurotic woman who wanted to kill him. Never would he understand that she was afraid.

“Men are different now, they're just hungry. They want it all! You have to rely on yourself or else you’ll be left alone! Even rich people can’t keep each other happy. Look at Bill and Melinda Gates!”, She was getting defensive, though there was all the proof that things could go sour for two people at any moment. That their dad not being around wasn't fault of his own. “Men can do whatever they please and no one could stop them”. Lynn’s face glowed red and glistened with a layer of sweat though she hadn’t been shouting. Gripping the island counter, she tried to compose herself. It was the strain of holding back tears as she tried to speak confidently that had physically exhausted her. She could be thankful for her abundantly present mother but still she mourned the father which she felt she knew so briefly. Her mother never cheated on their father but she wouldn’t let her hold him back either. It was unspoken but he couldn’t bear to exist as a burden anymore. Slowly her mom stopped laughing at his jokes and started responding with cold practicality, she began to flinch in the face of affection and dedicated herself to becoming chillingly beautiful. Despite the rings and vows and children, it was very clear he couldn’t touch her. How had 15 years of marriage devolved so rapidly? Lynn was only eight when he left and tore herself up constantly for her clearest memories of him being of his sorriest state.

Mary sighed audibly before apologizing. She let her eyes run over the serrated knife in her hand, the black plastic handle warm from soaking in the basin. The metallic suds fled before her eyes leaving the knife bare and…questionable. She placed it back into the sinks murky water before turning off the tap and drying her hands on an oven towel. With each movement she willed strength to enter her bones. Since they were children Mary had prided herself on nothing but being strong for her sister. She fought hard to become the perfect role model. She had to fight regardless. Their mother never went after child support so while there was always food on the table and decent clothes on their backs, neither of them would be getting a financial head-start in life by any means. Mary began babysitting before she found herself locked into childcare, going all in on child development, getting her degree and a contract with the local elementary school soon after graduating. She considered her so-called ‘nurturing’ presence to be a fluke when conversations like this with Lynn brought this irritation out. And sure Lynn could make her mad, their mother could make her madder but Job, questions about Job could make her blind with rage. Her main point was that their relationship was no one else’s business.

Mary only turned to face her, leaving the island between them. “I didn’t mean to be so short with you. Look, I know you have your ‘thing’ about men but I beg of you Lynn, leave me out of it. I support your ‘free thinking’ but it’s making you insufferable, I mean, am I not allowed to be happy because some statistics say most people aren’t? And why do you have to pick on my relationship? Job and I have never been anything but a good example of what a healthy relationship looks like”. Her voice faltered in the last sentence, unsure of her relationship's credibility. It was true, she had gone above and beyond to ensure she found someone who outwardly acted like an amazing partner in every way. She wanted to leave it at that.

“Job…” the rest got stuck in Lynn's throat. Job had dined with them and had ducked out to the guest room once his plate was cleared. They only had the chance to be a perfect couple when he was forced to be around her. She hadn’t anticipated starting with Mary this way. The conversation she wanted to have was calm, where she could simply tell Mary what happened.

Mary picked up Lynn’s sentence saying, “Job and I were brought together by the Lord. And the good Lord will show you the way too. You’re young Lynn. One day,”—

“How dare you bring the Lord into this”, Lynn practically spat at her sister. “The Lord bringing you together was his worst mistake, only second to making men at all! Your boyfriend thinks I’m a fucking demon Mary. Seriously, like demonically possessed. He always has. With being so young and going to church and reading all these dark stories after Mom and Dad divorced, I believed him! I seriously thought-- he seriously tried to convince me I’m possessed! Since starting university I’m beginning to understand I’m not the sick one. Please understand. I’m sorry”. Lynn choked on a sob before covering her mouth and finally putting her weight on a barstool. She used her other arm to hold her midsection as she was sure she was to be sick, confused as to why she both pleaded and apologized to her sister at this moment. She was fully running at the mouth, unable to stop herself. Her one hand moved from mouth to chest as she inhaled dramatically not realizing how comforting it felt to constrict her lungs. Then she tried starting again, urgently she tried to get out “H-h-he, oh my--”

All the fat in Lynn's face sat betwixt Mary's thumb and index finger. Her mouth, caught midword, was now being filled with her own flesh. Her molars quickly burrowed into her cheeks like hypodermic needles. The rest of Mary’s fingers cupped her chin and jutted her face up and outwards. Their eyes both flashed, communicating wildly different things. Lynn’s teary eyes came into focus, mortified to find her sister had come around the island and was now mere inches from her. And Mary, Mary was all wild in the face, clearly having her own qualms with the indirect accusation.

She hissed, “Shut your mouth right now. He’s upstairs you fucking idiot, how dare you…”, before realizing Mary’s eyes had shifted to something just beyond her. Something past her ear, just over her shoulder. The two were statuesque, locked in the mocking embrace. Will flooded her mind, she willed like all hell for Mary to look back at her, to refocus her fear. Instead, her eyes pooled with tears until they slid over Mary’s fingers loosening grip. Slowly her grasp released until her hand fell limply at her side. She straightened herself, taking that same restricting hand to smoothen Lynn's mousey hair. Again and again she ran her hand over the auburn curls as she watched her sister cry. Mary was also silently shaking now, the sympathetic gesture was merely self-soothing.

“I’m sorry”, she whispered. Lynn’s eyes and a weighty hand fell on Mary’s shoulder at the same time. The hand followed the length of Mary’s arm before catching it at the crook and bringing it down to her side. Job closed in, his arms slithering around both her arms and waist. He stood only a few inches over her but his presence felt monstrous. Since he began looming in the doorway his energy sent rods of heat through both the girls. The room was set to combust.

Job kissed the side of Mary’s head lightly and lovingly, relieved he didn’t have to fully restrain her. “Go ahead and pull down your pants Lynn". And without hesitation, Lynn stood putting her nearly nose to nose with her sister. This reanimated Mary. “Sorry?”, she managed. Job tightened his grip walking them a few steps backward. As per Mary’s earlier wish, Lynn’s eyes were now locked on her. The tears had ceased and she now stared on without a scrap of emotion on her face as she went for the button of her church forbade cargos. Mary scoffed, unable to believe how things were escalating. Will had left her body as soon as Job had made himself known. He instilled in her that it was not a woman’s place to interfere after all. So she let the scene play out.

Lynn’s pants fell revealing deep brandishing, twin burns set layers within her olive thighs. Mary gasped. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The scars slightly warped from what she could only accredit to time, took on the shapes of the Latin crosses which were splattered unceremoniously throughout their church and were encircled in wildly risen scar tissue, individual splits in the skin creating these notches. Or rather, thorns. Crowns ran around the crosses weaving the skin into a cruel symbology.

The Complexities of Freedom: A Discussion with Descartes and Locke

Rene Descartes and John Locke attend a social event in a large mansion. As the men socialize, the host recommends the two have a look in the home's library. Escorting them in, the men turn their backs to the door, studying the shelves of books. There is a great selection, among them being the works of Plato, Aristotle, and the likes of many others. As the host excuses themselves, they close the door and it seals with a quiet click. Descartes and Locke have presumably been locked in this room. Here then begins their discussion of escape, freedom, knowledge and God.

Locke: If I did not know better, I might assume that we’ve been locked in this room by our thoughtful host.
Descartes: How great, the gift of perception.
Locke: Or, how great the gift of opportunity. Many have made note not to look such a horse in the mouth.
Descartes: And what do you mean by this?
Locke: We have been presented the unique opportunity of forging our escape. Never have I been in such a situation, therefore I will gain a multitude of experience through this.
Descartes: Son, you have the God given ability to protect yourself.
Locke: We are born into the world, new and fresh, a clean slate. No knowledge of how to keep ourselves safe.
Descartes: It is an innate gift, your understanding of what a thing is, what truth is and what thought is.
Locke: Yet my understanding of what a thing is does not keep me safe nor is it able to protect me. This I can only know by experience. When we may observe in our natural faculties, fit to as easy and certain knowledge of them as if they were originally imprinted on the mind.
Descartes: Ah yes, as if they were predetermined to be experienced. As if these gifts were bestowed by a greater power and determinately, a God. For our faculties lay within our souls which are separate from the bodies we experience with.
Locke: How can we conceptualize without being familiarized with the concept originally? We may have the ability to perceive our outer world but we may only know a thing by processing it with our senses, know a truth by seeing it work, and know a thought by sentience.
Descartes: Hm, allow me to turn this over in my mind.

Descartes approaches a bookshelf, his finger brushing over finely dusted spines until he lands on a copy of Plato's Republic.

Descartes: Do you know what Plato's thoughts are on the human soul?
Locke: I am familiar but for your sake please, refresh me.
Descartes: Plato believed in the soul. He believed the soul is what separated us from animals, any other form of life. The soul is perhaps this sentience you speak of.
Locke: A soul, even as the validity of its existence is unclear to me, is not a replacement for the mind. It is redundant to see ourselves as no more than an amorphous metaphysical force guiding our bodies and storing all of our inner mental functioning. This is not sufficient enough to prove our ability to process and perceive as human beings. I agree with Plato that there is a distinction between animal and man, yet that distinction lay in the mind and its capabilities.
Descartes: Perhaps we should return to the idea of a God. The idea is only permissible by God himself, to synthesize something so much larger than ourselves. In the same way we cannot experience the infinite but we can grasp its concept. Not to be confused with the indefinite which are things which simply have no clear end. A thing may go on for an inconceivable amount of time but we remain with the understanding that there is an end. There is no start or end of God and our ability to conceive a supremely divine being cannot be one learned through experience. For there is no perfect being which we will encounter such as a God. This image is imprinted by God himself, we are given the capabilities to conceive such greatness. The idea of a God has been carried throughout times and cultures, in forms all deductive of a God.
Locke: There are populations who are exempt from this imprinted knowledge you speak of. A child or an idiot knows not of a God, For if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? And if they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. An infant cannot yet communicate yet you believe it has the capacity to understand complexities such as a God. An idiot has not the capacity to care for itself, but has an innate ability to discern danger. We know this cannot be.
Descartes: There are many things we do not know, many of which empirical evidence does not provide us answers to. Matter, mind, and God are only quantifiable by spatiotemporal dimensionality. There are patterns within our existence that are resistant to space and time, which we cannot truly fathom yet cannot be denied. Our sensory capacities are passive and our perception is out of our control. This is the link of all humanity. My experience is not seeing the color green but having light reflecting from the backs of my eyes allowing me to perceive the color green. Children and idiots may be outliers but they are not so far removed they have no capabilities of perception. Mind and matter simply depends on God's will.
Locke: We directly access the truth through experience and our ideas are merely finite because there are only so many experiences to be had, and with only so much life to live, there is no way to access it all. Even the truth itself is subjective on the basis that we have very little to certify what is true. It is to our benefit that we have a wide array of experiences to provide us with a broader knowledge so we can navigate life with ease. I still say, these experiences are inaccessible to children and idiots. They cannot conceive their own perception or what an idea is. They are not able to understand the technicalities of our existence, for they have no idea the color is seen through refraction. To think on such a level is a luxury.
Descartes: The inner awareness of ones thought and existence is so innate in all men that although we may pretend that we do not to have it if we are overwhelmed with preconceived opinions and pay more attention to words other than their meanings, we cannot in fact fail to have it. Thus when anyone notices that he is thinking and that it follows him from this that he exists, even though he may never before have asked what thought is or what existence is, he still cannot fail to have sufficient knowledge of them both to satisfy himself in this regard.
Locke: So you mean to say, to have internal awareness is to know existence?
Descartes: Yes. You need not demonstration to know you are alive.
Locke: Let us return back to the room we are in. We seem to have forgotten the situation at hand. Is touching this wall not a demonstration of my existence? I am solid, real, and unchanging. That is in part undoubtedly the knowledge to know we exist.
Descartes: Our senses are deceptive. Nevertheless, when deception occurs, we must not deny that it exists; the only difficulty is whether it occurs all the time, thus making it impossible for us ever to be sure of the truth of anything we perceive by senses.
Locke: So who is to be able to differentiate between these deceptions. How is it possible to identify reality from dreams? Who is to say I am not dreaming up this scenario, that the door is not locked and I have been free this entire time?
Descartes: But we do not dream all the time, and for as long as we are really awake we cannot doubt whether we are really awake or dreaming. And further more, the senses are quite passive and report only appearances. You can feel the wall is solid, see the doorknob is gold and feel the pressure of a lock in place. These are merely the physical.
Locke: Shall I give it a test then? See if we are trapped within a prison of our minds rather than our friends doing?

Locke reaches for the door handle, cool and undoubtedly round. He twists the knob and meets no resistance. The door clicks open just as it did when it shut.

Descartes: It appears we’ve gotten far ahead of ourselves. Perhaps there is something to the experience after all.

Citations:
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. and abridged by Kenneth Winkler (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996).

Lesson from Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and translated by Stephen Mitchell, has easily found its place amongst my top three favorite books, joined by Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson and a pending place for Catcher in the Rye (due for a redemption re-read but rivaled by Every Man by Phillip Roth). In a series of letters to a young poet coming of age who decides to pursue a job as an officer alongside his creative endeavors, Rilke contemplates not only what it means to be an artist but speaks on every part of the human condition. Self-expression, relationships, adulthood, and provides a whimsical lens which we can view the world through. Each letter is a meditation on prompts of which the reader has no knowledge, but nonetheless possesses an insightful evaluation of what it means to be a poet and really, a human. Only a 100 page read in a small paperback, the letters demand to be carried and turned over, again and again. While aiming to be practical, Rilke's advice is nothing short of beautiful either.

The first mark of a poet is the compulsion to create. If you feel you simply must, then you’ve arrived. He says, "build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse”. There is often the overlooked discipline of artists, but there is an immense sacrifice to make even when the tools of creation are words. To see the world as a sonnet takes sensitivity that stings when it comes across scorn of any kind. There are so many post-mortem anthologies released from the greats, who could not take the cruelness of the world battering their fragile hearts. Criticizing or comparing your means of self-expression is a hard no, as Rilke advises strongly against it. Looking outward for validation for a personal means of expression is contradictory. No one else has had the same culmination of experiences which could have led to that particular means of expression. The best thing to do is to look inwards, “describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty-- describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, images from your dreams, and the objects you remember”.